Create and use partial dates in forms

Study designers can now enable the use of partial dates in forms and site users can enter partial dates during visits.

What are the benefits?

Partial dates are particularly useful for collecting historical data without running the risk of leaving dates completely unknown. There might be situations when only the month and year are known by the site user or subject. For example:

• When a subject doesn't remember the exact start date of a concomitant medication they've been taking for a number of years
• When a study's or country's personally identifiable information (PII) regulations require only the month and year to be collected for a subject's date of birth

Details for study designers

When it comes to your updated workflow, here's what you need to know for date/time questions:

• If you select DD-MON-YYYY or MON-YYYY as the format, you can then enable a setting called Accept Partial Date
• You then can select a format for the Minimum Date Answer, such as MON-YYYY. This is what's required to be entered, at a minimum, by a site user

Figure 18-25 How study designers see the new Accept Partial Date toggle button

Details for site users

When it comes to your workflow, if partial dates are enabled in a form, you can select a separate value for the day, month, and year. If you don't know the day or month of a date, you can select a value of UNK for that element, depending on what the allowed date format is. If you omit the day, month, or year from a date question, you'll receive validation messages that indicate what fields you need to complete. Also, keep in mind that it is not possible to have a known Day part but an unknown Month part. In this case, a validation error will appear alerting you to correct the data.

Figure 18-26 How site users see a partial date in a form

Already working in a live study?

As soon as the upgrade for this release is complete, study designers and site users can start using this feature. Remember that the setting for partial dates is set to No, by default. Study designers must first enable the setting in Draft mode and update the study version in the Approved container, for site users to start collecting partial dates in the live study.